


Blood

by Linden



Series: Seven Devils [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: A Little Bit of Horror, Demon Blood, Hellhounds Make Great Pets for the Responsible Pet Owner, M/M, Problematic Nurses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the Boy King sees the shadow of his crown</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I never post WIPs, but I have been trying to get this freakin' story out the door for months on end, and other things keep coming up, and so I am hoping that, if I post the beginning of it, shame will compel me to actually finish the damn thing in a timely fashion. Chapter 2 coming down the pike next Tuesday!

**19 December 2000**  
**Nebraska**  
  
Weary and ill, Sam dreamed.  
  
He was at the crappy little plaza two miles from their motel, with its dollar store and shuttered theater and pizza place and bar, and the clock outside the bank read 12:17 AM. The lot seemed empty, save for a few cars and rusty pick-ups, dim and quiet and full of softly falling snow, but when he turned, bewildered ( _why am I—_ ), he found his brother retching on his hands and knees, barely conscious, ringed by four men who looked like football players gone to seed.

The sudden jolt of panic that shocked through him left a taste like metal on his tongue.

 _Dean!_  he tried to shout, heart kicking hard against his ribs, but he couldn't speak, couldn't move; his voice was sitting dead in his throat, and his body felt suddenly mired in sand. There was blood in Dean's hair, blood puddled on the snow and blood splattered across the tire-iron clenched in one of the strangers' hands, and Sam could hear, with painful clarity, the ragged wheezing of his brother's breath, the soft, animal sounds of pain in his throat. There was something . . . there was something broken, inside of Dean's chest; Sam could hear it, feel it, and there was nothing--he couldn't  _move_ —  
  
_Dean!_  he tried again, but managed nothing more than a low, frightened sound. His brother didn't look up. _Dean!_  
  
One of the men—bleeding from his nose, a thick arm wrapped around his ribs—turned to spit red into the dark.  
  
'You gonna finish it?' he asked, but the bastard with the tire-iron was already swinging, and the wet, heavy, splitting sound the thing made as it slammed into Dean's skull threw Sam back into the waking world.  
  
'—Dean!'  
  
His shout hung, heavy, in the chilly dark.  It took him a hiccuping, panicky moment to remember where he was ( _Nebraska; we're in Nebraska; we're at Eamon's motel in Nebraska_ ), and then he was rolling onto his side to curl up like a little kid, shaking and sweaty in his narrow bed.   _Dean.  Jesus.  Dean._ He tried to get his breath under control, tried to steady the jackhammer tripping of his heart, spectacularly failed at both. Swung his legs over the edge of the bed to sit up, pushed his hair back off his face with unsteady hands. He was dizzy with the fever that had been plaguing him all week, and the horror of his dream was clinging to him like a second skin; he squeezed his eyes shut, briefly, until it seemed like the world might have stopped spinning.  _It was a nightmare_ , he told himself, desperately.  _Jesus, it was just a nightmare; it was just a nightmare; you have them all the time_, except that it hadn't felt like just a nightmare; it had felt real, and Dean had—Dean had—  
  
_Be back before midnight, Sammy_ , his brother had promised when he'd left him three hours ago, with Gatorade and Saltines and the TV on low, to go hustle some much-needed cash.  But it was . . . it was late, now, 11:58, and Dean wasn't  _here_ ; where—  
  
12:17, the clock had said, at the plaza in his dream, when a bucket of Dean's blood had been dark on the snow, and it had been a dream, it had been only a  _dream_ , but the terror of it wasn't fading, like the terror of his nightmares almost always did upon his waking, and real panic was thrumming in his blood now, for no good reason he could name.  _Dean,_ he thought, and, _Go_ , his heartbeat murmured.  _Go-go. Go-go. Go-go._  
  
His chest hurt. 

 _Go_.   _Go-go._

He got himself up, knees weak, head heavy.  _You're fine_ , he told himself, fiercely, as he pushed bare feet into his trainers, and a moment later he bent to vomit, weakly, into the trash can between the double beds. He brought up nothing but bile; he hadn't been able to keep solid food down for most of the day.  _You're fine. You're just—you gotta_ —He was shaking, badly, grip white-knuckled on the nightstand.  _Dean_.  
  
_Go._  
  
He got himself over to the door, took two tries to steady his fingers enough to loosen the chain. His jacket was tossed over the back of the nearby chair; he stared at it a moment, knowing he should put it on, utterly unable to remember how to get his arms into it. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered; he just had to—he just had to find Dean; that was all he had to do, and so he threw himself out the door into the dark, into the snow, and ran.  


***

  
Sam had always liked to run.  
  
He'd been able to handle two miles without stopping by the time that he was nine, had put in five miles most every morning, rain or snow or shine, since he’d turned fourteen—sometimes with Dad, sometimes with Dean, but most often alone, Silverchair in his ears and asphalt stretching out wide and black ahead. Running was easy, usually; running was _relief_ , but the roads tonight were an utter mess, and he was half out of his mind with fear and fever, and he had no rhythm to rely on, no groove to slip into, only the blood pounding in his ears and the ragged whistle of his breath, only the unsteady slap of his soles against the pavement as he barrelled through the half-frozen snow and salt along the shoulder, feet slipping in the mess. He was a mile from the motel when a semi passed and drenched him in a sheet of icy slush; he didn't pause, barely felt it, kept running.  _Dean_ , he thought, every time he stumbled, both times he fell.   _Dean_.  
  
He thought he heard howls on the wind, far behind him, closing in.  
  
He was two blocks from the plaza when he saw a knot of men at the far edge of the lot, and felt his chest tighten in a panicked vice.

 _Dean_.

He had no time to wonder how he’d dreamed a true dream, no time for anything at all. A bus stop bench loomed up suddenly in front of him as he reached the corner of the lot; he hurdled it, without thinking, tried to lengthen his stride, desperately, tried to put on more speed, even though he was already running full out and his body was informing him in no uncertain terms that there wasn't much more of this it could take.  _Dean. Dean. Dean._  He could see them more clearly now, his brother still standing, still fighting, two men picking themselves up off the pavement and another blocking a vicious jab to the throat, but a fourth was coming up behind Dean with a tire iron already swinging, and Sam was a hundred, ninety, eighty feet away and too late, too late.  
  
'Dean!' he screamed, and felt something punch out of his chest, as though his heart had given one terrific beat and cracked his sternum apart.  
  
He was on his hands and knees, panting, utterly unaware of having fallen; lifting his head (and it was heavy, so heavy), he saw the man with the tire iron inexplicably sprawled on the pavement in an untidy pile of limbs, looking like a puppet with its strings cut; but there were still three men on their feet and he didn't—he couldn't—  
  
_Dean_ , he thought, desperately, trying to move, because he had to get there, he had to help, and then there was a sort of rushing sound on either side of him, and growls that raised the hair on the back of his neck, and between one breath and the next his brother's attackers were on the ground, no chance to even scream before blood went spurting in vicious bouts of liquid darkness across the snow, and Sam felt a sudden clench of dizzying pain in his chest ( _Dean_!) half a heartbeat before everything went dark.  
  


***

'—can hear me; your eyes are open. Hey. Hey hey hey. Sammy. Sam,' his brother was saying, and Sam blinked up at him, slow, bewildered. He was lying across Dean's lap in the snow, cradled against his brother's chest and wrapped in his jacket, and in the yellow glow from the lot light above Dean's beautiful face was—  
  
There was a  _horrific_  amount of blood.  
  
' _De_ —’  
  
'It's not mine,' Dean said, sounding shaken and uncertain, and younger than he had in years. 'Shhh, shh. Sammy, it's okay. It's not mine, all right? I'm fine. I'm fine. No, no no. Don't,' he said, shifting as Sam tried to peer over his shoulder. 'Don't look, all right? Just—what are you even doin' here, huh? You're supposed to be—hey, stay with me, Sam, c'mon. Sam!'  
  
Sam forced his eyes back open. He couldn't get them to focus, really, and he tasted something hot and foul and like rotten eggs in his mouth. 'What—' He sounded like he'd been gargling razor blades; he swallowed and tried again. 'What hap—'  
  
'I don't know. Something was—I don't  _know_. But we gotta get movin', all right? Like, pronto, 'cause I don't wanna be here if whatever the hell that was comes back. You gonna be able to walk, you think, if I help you? Car's two blocks south.'  
  
Sam nodded, immediately regretted it as a flash of bright, sparking pain shot through his skull. Getting to his feet was a bitch, and he swayed dizzily against his brother for a long moment after he stood, shaking, skin clammy with sweat despite the cold. For a heartbeat he thought he felt rough tongues lapping at the blood on his scraped palms, thought he felt the upright, silken ears of hounds beneath his hands, and then Dean had an arm wrapped tight around his ribs, the other hand pressed warm and firm against his chest to keep him upright, and the two of them were making their way toward the street and the empty sidewalk beyond.  


***

  
He was aware of the walk to the car only in flashes: the cold wet of snow on his cheeks as they rounded a corner into the wind; the green of his brother's eyes; the warm press of his brother's arm across his chest, holding him upright as he vomited into a sewer.  _C'mon, Sammy, 's okay; we're almost there, man; I just need you to stay with me, all right? Stay with me, Sammy_.  
  
Time blipped, and he was slumped in the familiar cradle of the Impala's front seat, shaking, Dean turning the key in the ignition beside him, phone propped between his shoulder and ear. — _wrong with him, Dad; just get the hell back to the—_  
  
Time blipped, and he was dry-heaving into the footwell, Dean's hand fisted in the back of his jacket, Dean's voice telling him to _breathe, Sammy; s'okay; you're all right, man; just stay awake for me this time, c'mon._  
  
Time blipped, and he was slumped against the outer wall by their motel door, Dean cursing at the key sticking in the frozen lock, their father beside him, smelling of cigarettes and whiskey and someone's cheap perfume, slapping his cheek gently with an open hand.  _Sam. Sammy open your eyes, son, come on_ , and Sam wanted to tell him that his name was Sam, that only Dean could still call him Sammy, but then the door was open and Dean was easing him inside ( _all right, little brother, see, here we are; told you I'd get you home; you just gotta—_ ), and as they stepped over the salt and iron at the threshold Sam’s entire body lit up with pain, ice in his veins and fire in his bones and raw agony beneath every centimeter of his skin. It was gone again the space of a heartbeat, but it was still enough to drop him to his knees, a sound like that of a dying animal in the back of his throat, and as he pulled in a sobbing breath through his teeth he was aware only dimly of Dean's curses, muffled beneath this sudden, terrible sort of  _whining_  at his back, beneath the sounds of nails scrabbling on the cracked cement stoop. He got his head around, barely, and thought for one dizzy, terrible moment that he could see dogs the size of wolfhounds crowded at the door behind and all around his father, rough-coated, red-eyed, blood dripping from their muzzles, trying to push past Dad, trying to get  _in_ , and then there was a sudden surge of heat in his bones and the world went dark for the second time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stay awake in hospitals, folks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As more than a few folks have reminded me in my Tumblr box, this is late! Because life, alas, occasionally goes awry and steals all the writing time I have.

He woke, slowly, in the cradle of a warm narrow bed, to the sound of canned applause and to someone shouting, ‘Come on down!’

He blinked once, twice, bleary and bewildered, as the world came slowly into focus around him. Dim afternoon light was slanting in through the wall of windows by his bed, and _The Price Is Right_ was playing softly on the TV in the corner overhead ( _on the ceiling why the fuck is it on the_ — _)_ , and the walls were a cheerful blend of reds and yellows, with bright green trim thrown in. It took Sam a minute to realize that he was in a hospital, and another to wrap his head around the fact that they’d put him in the goddamn _pediatrics ward_ , and one more to realize just how much he hurt, Jesus, just sort of generally, all over—chest tight, muscles aching, skin raw where the sting of scrapes was waking on his knees and shins and the heels of his hands. There was an IV line in his left hand and some sort of monitor whirring softly nearby, and Dean ( _Dean Dean DeanDeanDean_ ) was stretched out just beside him, in one of the big recliners that nurses always guarded like gold. He was in jeans and Dad’s Zeppelin tee and had two days’ worth of stubble on his beautiful face, and he looked like hell, even asleep—weary and worn and worried, with a bruise high up on his left cheekbone and a small line of stitches in the corner of his swollen mouth.

He remembered his brother sprawled broken in his dream ( _true dream I dreamed a true dream_ ), remembered the men around him ( _finish it are you going to finish it_ ); remembered Dean in the lot, still fighting, remembered the man with the tire iron sprawled in the snow, while his fellows were still on their feet. They’d died, he was pretty sure, the four of them, killed by whatever the fuck had come snarling out of the dark, and he should . . . he should feel something about that; he was sure he should, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The only thing twisting up tight in his chest was relief that his brother was safe, that he was here and whole and breathing. Dean had been running toward monsters since he was nine years old, had survived witches and rawheads and ghosts and that goddamned werewolf in the Rockies, and the fact that it was _men_ who nearly—who would have— 

He was cold.

He curled up on his side in his borrowed bed, pulled his knees up like a little kid ( _they would have killed him they would killed_—). ‘Dean?’ he said softly, selfishly, because his brother was clearly exhausted, but Dean didn’t wake, and Sam couldn’t bring himself to try again. He tucked his hands against his breastbone to still their shaking, lay watching the rise and fall, rise and fall of Dean’s broad chest, and never knew when he fell back asleep.

***

He woke again in the small hours of the night, uneasy, from a dream of his brother teasing a huge black dog with something warm and bloody in his hands. He’d known what it was, in the dream; he’d been _laughing_ , in the dream, but it was already fading, ribboning away from him like smoke, and he didn’t try to get it back. The room was dim, no light save for the soft glow from the hallway spilling through the half-closed door, and Dean was still in the recliner, snuggled now beneath a warm blanket with a pillow beneath his head, the remnants of a 2 Piece Box from KFC on the tray beside him.

Sam stretched a little, shifted, felt his stomach give a startled lurch as he found a nurse spiking a blood bag on his other side. The man was in soft Snoopy scrubs, tired-looking and middle-aged, a little soft around the middle, and he seemed familiar, somehow; he _felt_ familiar, though Sam was certain he didn't know him. Muzzy with sleep, he watched as he hung the bag ( _blood why are they giving me_ —), watched as he opened the clamp on the line of saline, squeezed the drip chamber until it was half full. A low, unpleasant prickle was humming just beneath his skin, was coiling tense and queasy in his gut, and there was—there was something wrong; something was _wrong_ —

The nurse looked down at him, and smiled.

‘Why, little brother,’ he said, in a voice like nothing human, and Sam saw a serpent’s tongue between his teeth. ‘You’re awake.’

Sam tried to move; he _tried_ , but his body wasn’t his own, anymore: the thing gestured, oil-eyed, and his limbs were suddenly weighted down with sand, too heavy to lift, held in place by a hundred hard invisible hands. He couldn’t move, could barely breathe through the weight on his chest, pushing, _crushing,_ could hear Dean's soft easy breaths at his side, and Dean, Jesus, _Dean_ —

‘Shhhhh,’ the thing whispered, and he felt the muscles in his throat seize up before he could scream, felt his voice lock down. Desperation spiked, sharp and painful, in his chest. _You're dreaming_ , he told himself, struggling to slow his breath, his heartbeat. _You're dreaming; this is just a dream, just another nightmare, and you're going to wake up—_

‘Father wants you fed,’ it said, softly, and that didn’t even make any _sense_ ; Dad wasn’t even _here_ ; he was going to _wake up_ —

The thing stood looking down at him for a long moment, in silence, and Sam felt spiders crawling live beneath his skin. ‘Such a fragile little shell, for such potential,’ it said at last, still softly, stroking idle fingers along his jaw, and its touch hurt; Christ, it hurt, like hot needles in his skin, burrowing down toward the bones. ‘You've got everyone’s attention now, you know. Father’s, Belial’s, Na'amah's—even Asb'el's, and he hasn’t bothered much with mortals since he fucked Japheth’s daughters, all the way back before the Flood.’ It let its hand slip up to cup Sam’s cheek, and in its face was jealousy and hatred and something very like to reluctant awe. ‘The Hounds don’t just _leave hell_ , little brother,’ it murmured. ‘Do you know how often they have, since Sin birthed them after the Fall? Once for our brother Henry, six hundred years ago at Agincourt, and again, not long after, for our sister Jeanne, at Orléans. And now, here, for you.’ It brushed a thumb across his mouth, burning. ‘For Father’s beloved son, in whom he is so very, very well-pleased.’

Something in Sam shuddered, shifted, remembering too many long hot afternoons flipping through the Bible on Bobby's porch. What . . . what did—

The thing turned back to the IV pole beside him, rocked the blood bag gently up and down, up and down, up and down. Something like embers was sparking in its depths. ‘This is his, you know,’ it said, as it connected the tubing to the port in Sam’s hand, flushed the line clear with saline, closed off the saline clamp, easy and efficient, like it had done this a thousand times before. Sam tensed, _pulled_ , felt cold sweat breaking out all across his body, couldn’t move. _No._ Hot frightened tears were welling in his eyes, spilling cool down his temples; he didn't understand what was happening, but whatever was in that bag, it wasn't—he couldn't— ‘Fresh from the vein, an hour past. He would have come himself, but, well—’ It opened the clamp on the blood line; dizzy with panic, Sam watched the dark red flow down into the drip chamber, run down the line, felt the cool push of residual saline in his veins. _No, no, no no no no—_ ‘Someone has to keep an eye on John, don’t you think?’

He snapped his gaze back to the thing’s smug grin, horrified. _Dad_ , he thought, half a heartbeat before he felt something hit his veins in a rush of black sludgy warmth, and then he was sightless and deaf and drowning beneath burning, burning heat. He screamed, soundlessly, felt his spine arching despite the terrible weight, his fingers suddenly free to scrabble at the sheets, his toes to curl, and it was agony and it was ecstasy and it _didn’t stop_ , just rolled him under one wave of darkness after another, and he was drowning; he was dying; he was being caught up in a hot sulfurous black wind and flying, on great smoky wings of ash and bone-dust and fire, and Dean was wrapped around him, laughing, as the world far below them burned, and burned, and burned.

Distantly, he was aware that his cock was swelling, thick and warm against his hip, that he was losing consciousness, that the thing’s hand was drifting down his neck, down his chest, down his ribs, burning his blanket and sheet and gown to ash beneath its touch.

‘Such a pretty boy, little brother,’ it said, softly, and then the fire in his veins roared into a conflagration, and Sam was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I really thought that this was a three-short-chapters fic. 
> 
> SURPRISE! It's not. Jesus Christ. 
> 
> If you're still reading, thanks so for being patient! I want to say that the last bit of this will be up this coming week, but, well, my ability to forecast available writing time is pretty much dodgy as fuck.

They discharged him AMA a little before nine, and still, Sam couldn’t remember.

He’d been sick; he remembered that well enough: curled up half-asleep in Eamon’s motel, watching Dean get ready to go hustle some poor bastards at pool and feeling like he’d been run over by three successive locomotives and then flattened by a passing semi. But after that, there was . . . there was nothing. He could summon faint, faint impressions—of growls and blood, of a serpent’s tongue, of feeling helpless and scared and _nonononono_ —but he couldn’t _remember_ anything _,_ not really, not for true _._ Not the two miles his brother told him he’d run for apparently no reason in the snow, not the shadows Dean had seen come snarling out of nowhere to tear apart four jackasses who’d been willing to beat him to death for the money they’d lost, not the ride to the ER when his fever had rocketed somewhere into the stratosphere and left him catatonic in their father’s arms. He just remembered waking, here, in the grey light of early morning, shaky and cold like he was coming down off the high of two triple-red eyes, and frightened to his bones for no reason he could name.

His stomach was still unsettled, even now, and there were still tremors in his hands, and he was taking too long to manage the buttons on his fly.

He was sweating, just a little, though the room was cool.

‘Hey.’ Dean’s voice, worried, close. Sam didn’t look up, still trying to steady his fucking _fingers_ , because they were shaking now and he couldn’t get them to stop; a heartbeat later Dean batted them away, gently, and then did up the last two buttons and zipped him into his hoodie, like he was still a little kid who couldn’t tie his own shoes, and Sam couldn’t find it in himself to be anything but comforted. ‘Sammy, we got nowhere we gotta be,’ his brother said, quietly, green eyes dark in the grey morning light. He looked worried and weary and so beautiful Sam could feel it in his chest, a familiar twist of guilt and wanting knotted up behind his breastbone, hot and tight and hurting. He’d learned how to ignore it, mostly, could go—had gone—weeks scarcely thinking of it at all, but today he felt . . . he felt raw, somehow, stripped open to the bone, and he just—he—he _wanted_. ‘You wanna stay put for another day—hell, you wanna stay put for another three—you say so.’

Sam shook his head, tucked his hands into the too-long sleeves of his sweatshirt before he did something stupid, like twine them into his brother’s jacket and tug him close and kiss him, because the first and last time he’d tried that, a month ago in Colorado, stupidly drunk on the adrenaline of a hunt and the cold clean scent of pine and his brother’s eyes in the light of a burning grave, it hadn’t . . . it hadn’t ended well. 'M fine,' he said, and—

‘Boys,’ their father said, from the door, and they turned, together. ‘Get a move on. We’ve got maybe seven and a half hours of daylight, and I want you at Jim's before dark.’ John's hair was tousled, and his eyes hooded and weary; he didn’t look as though he’d slept, and he was already heading out on another hunt, back-up for a hunter he’d only just met and scarcely knew. Sam had listened to Dean arguing with him in the hall that morning— _don’t care that his sister died like Mom, Dad; you don’t even know that he’s telling the truth, for Christ’s—_but it hadn’t done any good. Nothing ever did, when rumors of the thing that had killed their mother were concerned. ‘I’ll call when Reuel and I get to Amarillo.’

_—one has to keep an eye on John, don’t you think?_

Sam flinched, just a little, at the sudden fragment of memory, jagged as broken glass. There was no context to it, just the twist of reasonless panic it tightened in his gut, and he didn’t— 

Their father was still looking at him, brow furrowed, just a little. _‘_ Sammy, you gonna be all right?’ he asked, and Sam wondered just how shitty he looked, if even their dad were asking.

He nodded, once. ‘Yeah,’ he managed, pushing a hand back through his hair. _I can’t remember; why can’t I remember_—‘Yeah, I’ll be fine.’

***

It was bitter outside, even protected as they were in the hospital’s garage from the wind, and the air carried the sharp bite of cold and the promise of snow and of the turning of the year. Dean propped him up against the passenger’s side door while he made a nest of sorts for him in the back, from the pillows and blanket he’d lifted from their two-times-before-last motel and the old down comforter he’d stolen years ago in Colorado. And although the comforter had a long rip up one side, now, and was stained from old blood that had never washed clean, and although everything smelled faintly of exhaust fumes and warm metal and guns, as Sam curled into the familiar leather cradle of the seat he felt . . . he felt cozy, all the same; he felt _safe_ , as he hadn't since he’d woken.

He didn’t mean to sleep. But his eyes were heavy, and his makeshift bed was warm, and he was dreaming before they were twenty minutes down the highway, the rumble of the tires on the road the surest lullaby he knew.

*** 

He was screaming when he woke, the car pulled off pell-mell onto the shoulder, Dean halfway over the seat, reaching for him, white-faced.

‘—ake _up_ , little brother; Jesus, _Sam_!’

He blinked up at him, drenched in sweat, shaking—

_Such a pretty boy, little brother._

—and there was a phantom burning in his left arm, where the wound from his IV was tucked away beneath a wrap bandage and square of gauze. His stomach heaved, once, hard; he pushed his brother’s hands away and got the door open and barely managed to tumble out onto his hands and knees before he was throwing up his breakfast all over the slush and snow on the side of the road—toast and eggs and oatmeal and bile, and there were crows cawing sharp and cold overhead.

 _They’re for me_ , he thought, without reason, and then his brother’s knees hit the pavement beside him. 

‘Okay.’ Dean had a hand on his back, rubbing worriedly at his shoulder blades. ‘Okay, Sammy, ‘s okay; just get it up; ‘s all right,’ and Sam brought up the last of what was in his stomach and then just let his head just hang for a minute, panting softly, hair brushing soft against his cheekbones. He couldn’t remember what he’d dreamed, couldn’t remember why he’d been screaming, but that _voice_ , Jesus; what was that _voice_ —

‘Okay.’ Dean’s other hand was on his chest, easing him back on to his heels. ‘Okay. Just take a breath, all right? I gotcha. I’m gonna take you back to the hospital, kiddo; you’re not—’ 

He shook his head, vehemently, a cold knot tightening in his gut for no reason he could name. ‘No.’

‘Sam, you’re still _sick_ , man; I knew I shouldn’t have let Dad sign you—’

‘I’m fine. It was just . . . it was just a dream.’ He pushed his snow-damp, scraped-up hands through his hair, forced his breath to settle. Opened his eyes to get his bearings as an eighteen-wheeler roared past, the car rocking gently beside them in its wake. ‘It was just a dream,’ he repeated, more steadily, but he couldn’t _remember_.

‘Yeah, well, you were screaming for like ten freakin’ seconds in your sleep, dude; that’s not—’

‘. . . it was a bad one,’ he managed, because it must have been, Christ; he hadn’t woken up screaming since he was a kid. ‘Dean, I’m fine, really; I—I’m sorry.’

Dean looked at him, irresolute, clearly still half a heartbeat from loading him into the car and pulling a U-turn in the middle of the interstate, but nightmares, they—even Dad had nasty ones, sometimes, that left him awake with the TV on low at three in the morning; they were just part of the gig, part of being a Winchester, part of the things they Did Not Talk About Ever, just pushed down deep and locked away.

Dean put the back of his hand to Sam’s forehead, checking for fever like he was still a little kid; Sam let him, without comment or complaint, and after a minute more Dean scooped up a handful of cold clean snow, held it out to him. ‘Rinse out your mouth,’ he said, gruffly, and waited until Sam had chewed and spat out a mouthful of snow— _cold fuck ow_ —before getting to his feet and fisting a hand in Sam’s sweatshirt to tug him up to his.

The crows were still circling overhead, black against the wide grey sky.

Sam stayed awake for the rest of the ride north, curled against the passenger door up front, Dylan and CCR in the tape deck and Dean tapping gently along on the wheel. They stopped for gas, twice, and had a makeshift lunch in a Kwik Mart parking lot, and snow started falling, soft and thick, when they were still two hundred miles from Blue Earth. By the time they pulled into the rectory’s half-plowed drive, the wind was up and the day was dying, and Dean unclenched his hands from the wheel with a tired, grateful curse.

Their father hadn’t called.

They got the bags out of the trunk, pulled a tarp over the car, headed up the front steps. The porch light was already on, and the big living room windows lit up against the gloom; Sam could see Jim and Andrew playing chess by the fire, a Christmas tree bright and merry beside them.

A crow perched on the porch rail cawed a raucous, harsh-edged welcome, its eyes beetle-black in the winter gloom.

***

Sam slept badly that night, lonely and alone in the room he used to share with Dean, drifting for a little while only to wake sweaty and cold from dreams he couldn’t remember, with snatches of a rich, sibilant voice in his ear ( _wants you fed our brother Henry from the vein an hour past_ ). It was past 3:00 when he gave up, and got up, and padded downstairs into the warm quiet dark of the house.

He wandered, for a little while, room to room—checked the wards at the front door and the back, lit two candles for Dean and for their father in the rectory's small chapel, made himself a mug of hot milk in the kitchen, turned on the Christmas tree lights and the TV, very softly, before he curled up in the corner of the couch, with the taste of his childhood sweet and heavy on his tongue. Hot honeyed milk with cinnamon had been Bobby’s remedy for everything from missing Dad to broken bones when he’d been little, and though it had been years since Bobby had offered him any, preferring these days to pour out a few fingers of whiskey instead, the same as he did for Dean, it was still one of the sweetest comforts Sam knew. He sipped at it, slowly, hands curled around the thick warm mug, and felt no better when he finished it than when he'd begun. Tried to focus on the television, on whatever a man with a truly disturbing toupee was selling, and couldn’t. His head hurt. His bones hurt. And he felt . . . he felt _wrong_ , somehow, wrong and . . . and unclean, though he’d scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed himself in the shower before supper, skin pink and stinging by the time that he'd been done.

He dozed after awhile, fitfully, dreamed that there was a black dog stretched out beside him on the couch, blood on its paws, its massive head on his lap; dreamed that there was another at his feet, by the chair, at the door, on the stairs, at Dean's doorway and the foot of his bed in the upstairs hall. Dreamed of darkness—sulfurous, fire-shot; dreamed of Dean stretched out naked and warm beneath him, gore-splattered, white-eyed, long legs wrapped around Sam’s hips and hands tight in Sam’s hair, moaning and laughing and cursing as Sam rocked inside of him, slick and thick and bare. And Sam could—he could _feel_ it _(but I’m dreaming this isn’t—)_ , the blood-wet silk of his brother’s hot skin pressed against him, the smooth tight perfect heat around his cock _(—real I’m dreaming I oh—),_ and there was ash all around them and raw hard rock beneath Sam’s hands, and it was good; oh, Jesus, it was so fucking _good_ —

Dean grinned up at him, panting, a flush already high on his chest and in his throat and cheeks. _C’mon_ , he murmured, tugging, and tilted his head back to let Sam mouth at the long line of his throat. _Mmmmm, that's it, Sammy, you’ve been such a good boy; you can have as much as you want, sweetheart, go ahead,_  and Sam felt his stomach lurch with hunger and lust alike and he _bit_ , hard, mouth flooding with copper and sulfur and something black and sticky-sweet. Dean groaned and arched, the hot wet wash of his semen between them as he came scarcely noticeable on their hot wet skin, hands twisting in Sam’s hair, and the _taste_ of him, God; Sam couldn’t—he had to—

He woke whimpering, on the live-wire shock of orgasm, already fading but still enough to send his fingers scrabbling over the upholstered cushions of the couch, nails digging in; still enough to leave him panting, softly, brain coming back online groggy and slow _._ He was wet, his body numb, cock softening where it lay sticky against his thigh, and the room was quiet all around him—the TV gone to static, sometime while he’d slept, the grandfather clock in the corner ticking, ticking, ticking on. But he could hear a radio alarm sounding, softly, down the hall, heard it go silent, heard a door creaking open a moment later, and though his knees were still shaky he was on his feet, was moving, was upstairs with the bathroom door closing soft behind him, because it was 5:00 AM and  _Sorry, Pastor Jim, I jizzed my pants because I was dreaming about my brother_ was not how he was willing to start his day.

The laugh he bit back at the thought of it was verging on hysterical, and he knew it. 

He braced his hands on the edge of the sink and breathed, heart still jackrabbiting in his chest. _You can have as much as you want, sweetheart, go ahead . . ._ He’d been having wet dreams about his brother since he was twelve, so they were hardly new; they weren't, at this point, even noteworthy. But they’d never been that vivid, for Chrissakes, and they’d never been that _violent_ , and he didn’t—the blood, Dean's blood, he’d . . . he’d _wanted_ it—

He looked up at himself in the old mirror above the sink—hazel eyes, scattered moles, sharp chin—and couldn’t shake the sense that someone else was looking back. Something eeled up out of the dark

— _fucked Japheth’s daughters_ —

but was gone again before he could catch it, leaving him cold and uncertain and unsteady. He turned away and climbed into the tub, turned the water up as hot as it would go, and kept scrubbing long after the sweat and the semen had rinsed off clean. Something was clinging to every inch of his skin; he could feel it; something was _inside_ of him—

He dropped the soap and washcloth, finally, when blood was welling in the not-yet-healed scrapes across his hands. Shaking, he braced his palms against the tile wall, let his head drop, let the water run.

His back would be tender for a week from the burns.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep thinking this fic is finished. I am so sorry.

The other side of Christmas found the rectory quiet—Jim and his fellow priests busy with the parish and in the town, John still in the wind, and Sam still unable to sleep, plagued by nightmares he could remember only in snatches, or caught up in dreams that he woke from with the ghost of Dean’s hands and mouth and body ( _not Dean’s they’re not Dean’s that’s not Dean_) still shivery-hot on his skin.

He was awake around two in the morning two days before New Year's, when a hospital in Arizona called about their father.

***

They were on the road twelve minutes later, Dean white-knuckled behind the wheel, Sam heart-sick and terrified beside him. _You call me as soon as you have news_ , Jim had said, in his pyjamas and parka and snow boots, standing in the cold windy dark of the drive with exhaust smoking white all around. _I’ll have my cell with me, wherever I am_. And Sam had promised; he had, but what that news was going to be, he didn’t . . . He looked down, unseeing, at the thermos of hot coffee the priest had given them for the road. Remembered the doctor’s voice in his ear, tinny and dispassionate— _bleeding in the brain, still unconscious, swelling is down but we won’t know his condition until he wakes_ —and swallowed against the thick ache in his throat. More than once, when he’d been spectacularly angry, he’d thought about what would happen if John ever died on a hunt, had sometimes thought that he’d be _glad_ of it, glad that he and Dean could get out of this life and build themselves a better one somewhere in the sunlight, but he’d never—he hadn’t actually _meant_ —

_Dad. Jesus, Dad._

Dean pushed the car up to 80 as they turned onto 110th—no stoplights to slow them, no other traffic on the road, nothing but fields and windmills to either side. Sam watched the miles bleed past in silence, put a hand on the dash to steady himself as Dean took a right and a left and put them on the highway, tires humming, speedometer creeping up.

Sam huddled into his brother’s old jacket, wrapped both hands back around the thermos for warmth. The heat was on full blast, Legos rattling in the vents, but there was only so much it could do against the bone-cracking cold of a Minnesota night, and the car was chilly.

He glanced over at Dean, all leather and denim and silence in the dark. ‘Dean, you want coffee?’ he asked, softly, and his brother shook his head, once, wordless, and didn’t take his eyes from the road.

Sam turned the radio on, very low, found the hum of _Coast to Coast_ to fill the quiet.

The night pressed in, dark and empty, all around them. 

***

The needle on the gas gauge was flirting with **E** by the time they pulled off just across the Nebraska line, two hours or so from sunrise. It was a shitty little rest stop, nothing more than a Shell station with one working pump and a run-down Speedee Mart, and the bitter, unforgiving wind hit Sam like a fist to the chest as he hopped out to get the gas started. The nozzle was cold enough to burn.

He fished out the hood of his sweatshirt and flipped it up, tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, listened tiredly to the click-click-click of the tank filling up beneath the steady rush of the wind. Rocked up on his toes a few times as he waited, watched his brother through the big plate-glass windows of the store. Dean was picking up a pile of candy bars and Red Bull and Coke, their standard fuel for a long highway run, and even at a distance he was so stupidly beautiful that Sam could feel it in his chest.

He looked away, wearily, trying not to remember his dreams ( _been such a good boy; you can have as much as—_ ), and let his gaze skip across the beaten-up Ford 150 parked near the doors, the snowy blacktop, the line of dim, sodium-yellow lights at the very edge of the—

His stomach dropped, for no real reason he could name, as he saw them near the curb: three black dogs sitting in a row, one two three, facing him across the lot. Rottweilers, they almost looked like, but _big_ , rough-coated and lean and unnaturally still, and Sam caught a flash of something he almost remembered, the scrabble of nails on a stoop and his father’s voice and—it was gone again before he could parse it, before he could even really see. He could feel sweat breaking out suddenly in the crooks of his elbows and the backs of his knees, could feel it slicking his back and the hollow of his throat. The dogs were panting, mouths open, breath visibly smoking in the frostbitten air; they were—they were _grinning_ , and there was something dark and wet and viscous spreading slowly in the snow around their paws.

‘Sammy?’

He blinked, and they were gone, nothing beneath the lamps but darkness, and he was alone in an empty lot with the gas turning off beside him and the wind in his face and silence all around. For half a heartbeat, as the wind gusted, he thought he caught the scent of something faint and foul and sulfurous, but then that, too, ribboned into the night, and there was nothing except the clean sharp scent of winter, and a low dull ache in his temples, and high up behind his ribs.

He was shaking, just a little, shoulders to heels, couldn’t stop.

‘Sam.’ Dean’s voice again, sudden and close, and he snapped his head around, desperately, to see his brother not three feet away, solid and real, two plastic bag in one hand, reaching for him with the other. ‘Dude, you all right?’

 _No_ , he thought, unsteadily. _I’m not; I’m—Jesus Christ, I'm hallucinating—_ ‘Y-yeah,’ he managed instead, because he was; he had to be: their father was unconscious in a hospital somewhere outside of Tucson, and Dean didn’t need him falling the fuck apart, not now, not here. He cleared his throat, glanced once more at the empty corner of the lot, then busied himself with the nozzle, screwed the gas cap back in, flipped the license plate up. His hands weren’t entirely steady; he was blaming it on the cold. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, just—asleep on my feet, I think.’ His nose was dripping; he sniffed, once, wiped his nose on the back of his wrist, smeared red across the soft grey cuff. Froze.

'Yeah, well, get your sleepin' feet back in the car, man,' Dean said, moving past him, and he tried to turn in time, tried to hide the blood on his face and his sleeve from his brother, but he heard their bags hit the ground and then Dean's strong hands were on him, hauling him back around. ‘Sam, _what_ —’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, wiping at his nose again, then a third time. He shook his head, muzzily. ‘Dean, I’m fine; it’s just—it’s just the cold or something; I—’ 

The ache in his temples was getting worse, suddenly, was building, was sharpening, was twisting into hot steel spikes driving straight into the center of his brain, and Dean was saying his name; he could hear it, but he couldn’t—he couldn’t get his _tongue_ to work, couldn’t get his lungs to work, couldn't—

His vision doubled, blurred, agony blossoming in his skull, in his chest, and for a heartbeat the scent of a woodfire and burning flesh was in his nose and he thought he saw—

He was propped up against the Impala’s side when he came to, Dean crouching down in front of him on the pavement, one hand gripped tight in his collar. ‘—me,’ he was saying, and Sam could hear the tight panic in his voice, thick on his brother’s tongue. ‘Sammy, Christ, _look_ at me, man; c’mon—’ 

He got his head up, had time to see the stark, painful relief on his brother’s face before Dean cursed and was forcing his head right back down again, because his nose was still leaking like a goddamned sieve. He pinched it shut, hard, and tried to pull himself together, even though he had no idea why in the hell he had fallen apart. He’d seen something, before he’d keeled over; it—a bonfire, a pyre, and . . . and something wrapped in white, _burning_ — 

‘—Sam!’

‘M fine,’ he said, thickly, though he wasn’t sure he was, not really. Their candy bars were half-spilled on the ground beside him, Coke rolling free, and he'd _seen_ something; he'd—

'—not kidding, man; you—'

—seen something wrapped in a . . . in a sheet; he'd seen something wrapped in a sheet, and it had been a body, a _body,_ what—

Dad.

 _Dad_.

'—Sam!'

He looked up, shaking, teeth chattering, blood on his mouth and on his chin and tasting like salt and copper on his tongue, and Dean's face was white in the harsh neon light overhead—white as a ghost, white as a shroud. 'We have to go.' His voice was ragged. 'Dean, Jesus, we have to _go_ ,' he said, and there was laughter, somewhere, high and cold, on the bitter winter wind. 


End file.
